Oh, no! Brantley’s in London! And we have to hear about it!
@jssteitzer, it's Presidents Day, and what a "US President" is has changed as moods everywhere get edgier - but the "Brantley in Britain" (once "London Journal") grouping has tended to have a constructive feel even when aspects are negative. I assumed that his very deeply felt disappointment in the "All About Eve" made him or the paper take it away from the "Brantley in Britain" category and just call it a Review. Maybe that's why "Brantley in Britain" feels like it's a more upbeat hope-filled collection, because where there's nothing positive he can find to say about a London show, the idea is that it doesn't fit the spirit of that collection. It looks like when there's nothing to be positive about, it has to get his honest reaction, or reviewing stops having meaning - so it gets reviewed, just not under this banner. (That's my reading of it, anyway. Unless someone just forgot to add it here, LOL.)
Recalling a show like "The Bodyguard," which he didn't like, with a monumental "except for" - that for all its built-in failings, the creatives had still put together an evening that allowed the right actress to give a phenomenal performance. But that fit with this grouping, and it actually stayed that star showcase in its US tour even with a different star who's a bit more effortful but still makes it more than worth $110 and spending 2 hours away from my computer keyboard. ($400? I couldn't, but I suspect Heather Headley would get well-heeled people paying that.)
I was lucky to walk up and get leftover reviewer tickets to Tortured in London last week - both Cate Blanchett and Stephane Dillane were fabulous, the staging is very creative, and seeing the war of the sexes in the very small Dorfman theater was a real treat. Yes two hours with no intermission is intense - the main actors never leave the stage and both visuals and dialog are very provocative and thought-provoking. I don't think you would be able to stage such a production at a mainstream theater in New York or anywhere in US.
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Of the three actresses, Katherine Parkinson is of course the least known (though Americans who love "Doc Martin" will find her in the early seasons playing a dippy receptionist) but she is definitely headed for great things. She had a smallish but pivotal role in "The Honourable Woman" as an Orthodox Jewish mother that was stunning.
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Ms. Blanchett and Linney are actors who can command an audience in a way which is compelling yet vulnerable. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to see them in action.
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Ah yes, the West End; “oh it’s so English, so London, just how I imagined it” despite it being too expensive for your average local and thus the domain of the filthy rich or tourists. A bit of tourist tat and a tickbox for “serious” actors slapped onto the country and stuck on with peeling sellotape. Why not pose infront of a red phonebox too, as you play in your cash-filled trough, and don’t forget to look away from us trying to scrape the cash together to keep a roof over our heads and food in the cupboards or being sanctioned into homelessness. Just ignore the disabled living in poverty or being driven into an early grave around you - they might distract you from the latest VIP in the Garrick!
Why not go visit a burnt-out towerblock that doubles as an ossuary and monument to callous, racist, divisive government, maybe you can sample “the culture” while you’re there? Or snap a few fun selfies of hungry kids or people being treated for cancer in a hospital store cupboard - oh, but there’s no incongruous, glitzy facades on display there, how unglamorous. Better the theatre or Harry Potter World or whichever gentrified, fake playground that’s too expensive for UK citizens. Besides, no-one wants to see unpleasant reality do they? They don’t get so many Likes on Instagram, right?
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@Mat, seriously, we have that here too. But when people talk about $28-million for a show like "Moulin Rouge" - that's not money that would have gone to charity, but to some other profit-hopeful enterprise. If a huge-staff show like that works and throws off many companies, then yes, investors will profit, but it will employ thousands of people at all levels, from well-paid designers to middle-income actors and musicians to skilled yet somehow "lower-paid" jobs all around the world like seamsters and seamstresses, printers, drivers, and on and on.
In the arts onstage, the "trickle down" (that we have to laugh at when pols just want to lower taxes) really does work, as every hit production sits down for a year or so in a town, or a touring company starts in another country. The more investors make, the more they'll re-invest, the more product, and more employment at all levels.
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@Mat being angry at an incompetent and cruel government and enjoying and growing from culture are not mutually exclusive. The turning away from culture by the working classes and their acceptance of the celebrity culture and anti leftist approach of the mass media like the Sun and the Mail are a major reason why they are in the mess they are.
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@Mat You know this is the theatre section, right? The Times has done a pretty good job covering social and economic nightmares at home and abroad, including the horrific Grenfell Tower fire.
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Wonderful to get here and read how tortured they feel and how they're dealing with it in the West End!
Of course, a joy of any trip is finding those off-the-beaten track shows that no one really talks about. A highlight for me of an L.A. trip was a “Spoon River Anthology” which starred Lee Meriwether (though Bridget Hanley did her role brilliantly at the matinee I saw); and in Vegas, after seeing “O” and “Celine Dion,” someone my mom met at the Bally's pool suggested a smashing revue at the Stratosphere, a hotel I'd never heard of, and a show which had never been on our radar.
So if Mr. Brantley can squeeze it in, and since so many of us can’t afford to go, I got a tip about a retooling of an old George Furth work (he was the writer of “Twigs” which Michael Bennett did just before "Chorus Line") which deals with the female-empowerment implications of a biological clock, but has a song no one sees coming that weaves together heady subjects like Pinter, Mahler and the female-empowering nature of a power lunch. (Just passing that along, in case it’s enough with the museums already; I know I've seen the Rosetta Stone three times, and it's great, but it just doesn't change.)
So much to see, I know, but Mr. Brantley sometimes asks us for questions or thoughts. P.S. Really, I love this series every time it happens. Thanks for giving the American perspective on London.
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@Freddie
Mahler also appears in The Ladies Who Lunch. Not Pinter, though.
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@Greater Metropolitan Area Pinter is name-checked in “The Ladies Who Lunch,” right before Mahler.
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@Greater Metropolitan Area, some uncovered lyric sketches suggest the Pinter reference was whittled down from what had been there:
Here’s to what’s making us plotz!
Tony cheers what draws.
Ooh, there’s an ellipsis, but it’s just three dots
Packaged for applause.
The empty space they’re calling the rage
Unsettling, but can it engage?
Some silence for the British onstage
Everybody pause!
Pause! Pause! Pause!
Pause!
(There's also a scratchy tape that's dubious and almost clairvoyant, which ends in "And one for Mueller!" and Stritch screams "Steve, who the heck is Mueller?" It became "a piece of Mahler's" and Stritch has said she thought that was a dessert from a fashionable bakery, but made it work brilliantly anyway.)
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